Tyap

Tyap is a regionally important dialect cluster of Plateau languages in Nigeria's Middle Belt, named after its prestige dialect. It is also known by its Hausa exonym as Katab or Kataf. It is also known by the names of its dialectical varieties including Sholyio, Fantswam, Gworok, Takad, "Mabatado", Tyeca̱rak and Tyuku. In spite of being listed separately from the Tyap cluster, Jju's separation, according to Blench R.M., seems to be increasingly ethnic rather than a linguistic reality.

Distribution

Native Tyap speakers are primarily found in the local government areas of Jema'a, Kaura and Zangon Kataf, although pockets of speakers are also found in Kachia and Kauru in southern Kaduna state, and Riyom in Plateau State of Nigeria. There are also large speaking communities in Kaduna South and Chikun Local Government Areas of the state. Skoggard presented the distribution of the Atyap people in Nigeria to include: Niger, Nasarawa, Kaduna states and the FCT.

Classification and dialects

Meek suggested that the Katab, Morwa, Ataka and Kagoro speak a common tongue and may be regarded as one; and later on, McKinney commented that the Kaje should likewise be included with the above, due to the linguistic and cultural similarities shared by them. Murdock classified Kagoro and other dialects comprising the current Tyap language group as "Plateau Nigerian", in his "Semi-Bantu" branch of "Bantoid subfamily" of "Negritic Stock". Tyap and Jju were placed by Greenberg under the "Plateau II" branch of the Benue-Congo language family. Later on, Gerhardt made a reconstruction of the branch, assigning it as "proto-Plateau". Again in 1989, Gerhardt placed Tyap and Jju under the South-Central subgroup, Central group, Plateau branch of Platoid, a division of the Benue-Congo languages. Achi stated that the Atyap speak a language in the Kwa group of the Benue-Congo language family. However, according to Bitiyong, Y. I., in Achi et al., the Kataf Group to which Tyap language belongs, is a member of the eastern Plateau. He went further to suggest that by utilizing a glotochronological time scale established for Yoruba and Edo languages and their neighbours, the separation of the Kataf Group into distinguishable dialects and dialect clusters would require thousands of years. Also mentioned was that,
noting further that this indicates that
He thereafter summarized that the implication for Tyap is that it has taken thousands of years to separate, in the same general geographical location from its about six most closely related dialects and stated that as a sub-unit, they required probably more thousands of years earlier to separate from other members of the "Kataf group" like Gyong, Hyam, Duya and Ashe who are little intelligible to them. The stability of language and other culture traits in this region of Nigeria has been recognized.

Dialects

Tyap has a number of dialects, including:

Dialect	Description
Fantswam	Spoken by inhabitants of the Fantswam chiefdom in Jema'a LGA, earlier regarded as Kagoro not until about the late 1950s were they recognized as a separate entity. It is closely related to Jju, the Gworok and Tyap proper dialects.
Gworok	Spoken by the A̱gworok, inhabitants of chiefdom bearing their name, in Kaura LGA. It seems like a 'junction dialect' between Jju and Takad and seems to be influenced by neighbouring dialects of the nearest language cluster, most notably Nikyob-Nindem and others.
Jju	Listed as a separate language. It is spoken by inhabitants of the Ba̱jju chiefdom in Zangon Kataf, Jema'a and Kachia LGAs. It has the greater number of speakers of any Tyap dialect, and could have been deeply influenced by Izere and Rigwe. Jju was also probably influenced by the dialects of its present Hyam-speaking neighbours and former neighbours, to the southwest. These contacts seem to be the leading factor in its drift from Tyap in comparison to other dialects.
Sholyio	Spoken by the A̱sholyio people of the chiefdom bearing their name in the Kaura LGA. It seems to have been influenced by the Beromic dialect of Iten, Rigwe and Gworok; its speakers share common borders to the east and south, respectively, with the people of the aforementioned.
Takad	Spoken by the Takad of the chiefdom bearing their name, in Kaura LGA, Kaduna State and Riyom LGA, Plateau State. It is closely related to the Tyuku and Gworok dialects, as well as Jju. Although its speakers see themselves as brothers of the Ba̱jju, Takat seems more related to the core Tyap dialects than to Jju, although has some of its special elements.
Tyap proper	Spoken by the A̱tyap people of the chiefdom bearing their name, in Zangon Kataf, also found in neighbouring chiefdoms in Kaura, Jema'a and Kauru LGAs. The dialect seems to be the mother dialect from which the others evolved, and was probably influenced by other languages, causing its drift from its parent proto-Plateau language root. British colonial anthropologist, Charles Kingsley Meek in 1931, classified most of the proto-Plateau ethno-linguistic groups as part of the "Kataf Culture Complex", speaking closely related dialects of a possible single language.
Tyecha̱rak	Spoken by the A̱tyeca̱rak; people in the A̱tyap, A̱sholyio and Gworok chiefdoms in Zangon Kataf and Kaura LGAs and as far south as the Jema'a LGA.
Tyuku	Spoken by the A̱tyuku'' people in Jema'a Local Government Area in Takat chiefdom, around the Ni̱mbyio forest reserve of southern Kaduna State. The dialect is often regarded as a dialect of Takad, and seems to possess the most language drift of any Tyap dialect, second to Jju.
Other dialects	Other dialects related to Tyap include Kulu, Nghan and Terri.

Phonology

The Tyap alphabet had 39 letters, as drafted by the Tyap Literacy Committee during the early 1990s:
However, a current development as of 2018, has the Tyap Basic Alphabetical Chart reduced to 24, as follows:
The letter "ch" would henceforth be represented by the symbol "c", without the "h". All others remain the same.

Vowels

The seven vowels of Tyap may either be short or long monophthongs sounds. The language has five diphthongs:.

Consonants

The language has over 80 monographic and digraph labialized and palatalized consonant sounds, classified into fortis and lenis modifications. The following table contains the main basic consonant sounds of Tyap:

Syntax

Tyap has the SVO constituent order type as illustrated below in the first given example:

Vocabulary

Affixes and concord

Tyap's noun-class affixes appear after its word stem. These affixes consist of prefixes, usually attached to the root of the word for pluralization. For example: a̱som —a̱yaasom, bwak —mbwak, a̱kwon —a̱ka̱kwon, etc. Meanwhile, the CV suffixes—usually alternating, and following the noun, are usually rendered as separate words in the orthography. For example, a̱som wu, a̱yaasom ba, bwak hu —mbwak na, a̱kwon ka —a̱ka̱kwon na, etc. These constitute the nominal affixes and concord of Tyap.

Reduplication

Reduplication of nouns takes place for pluralization. Usually, the first root syllable gets duplicated. For example, tyan —tityan, a̱nyung —a̱nyunyung, a̱kwon —a̱ka̱kwon, etc.

Words associated with the alphabet

Letter	IPA Symbol	Tyap dialects and Jju	English translation
a	/a/	aba̱n	welcome
a̱	/ə/	a̱gwam	ruler, king, chief
b	/b/	bat	wall, fence
c	/t͡ʃ/	cat	want, love, need, like
cy	/t͡ʃʲ/	cyat	cut/thatch grass
d	/d/	dam	to worry
e	/e/; /ɛ/	a̱lyem	tongue, language
f	/f/	faat	to cut
g	/g/	gaat
gb	/g͡b/	gbang	far
gh	/ɣ/	ghan	to hurry
ghw	/ɣʷ/	ghwang	drawing
ghy	/ɣʲ/	a̱ghyang	another
h	/h/	hyet	arrow
hy	/ç/	hyenhyiam	sour
hw	/ʍ/	yihwa	what
i	/i/	ii	yes
i̱	/ɨ/	ci̱p	twisting
j	/d͡ʒ/	jem	hippopotamus
jhy	/ʒʲ/	jhyi	to repair
k	/k/	kan	medicine
kh	/x/	khap	cultivating
kp	/k͡p/	kpa	to pound, pestle
l	/l/	li	to see
m	/m/	mup	to grab
n	/n/	nam	meat, flesh, muscle
ng	/ŋ/	ngaan	to be last
ny	/ɲ/	nyam	animal
o	/ɔ/; /o/	long	fire
p	/p/	piit	nothing, to lose, to score nought
r	/r/	ra̱ra̱k	to enter with ease
s	/s/	san	to receive, to save
sh	/ʃ/	shan	stick, staff
shy	/ʃʲ/	shyi	to swear
t	/t/	ta	to throw
ts	/t͡s/	tsang	crocodile
u	/u/	lyuut	to write
v	/v/	vam	body
w	/w/	wan	to cook
y	/j/	ya	to eat
z	/d͡z/	za	rain